The Truth About Better Decision-Making (Collection), 2/e

Truth 8. Be prepared to profit from your mistakes

It's not enough to make mistakes; you also have to be prepared to learn from them. There's an old story about a successful entrepreneur who spoke to a group of business school students. They asked him for the secret to how he earned his wealth. "Good decisions," he said. But the students pressed further: "How did you learn to make good decisions?" His answer, "Experience." But, asked one student, "Where did you get this experience?" His answer, "Bad decisions."

This is true only if you have a process to learn from your mistakes.

In his book, The Go Point, Michael Useem tells the story of Lenovo CEO Liu Chuanzhi, who founded one of the world's largest computer companies. Chuanzhi was not trained ...